La Princesa de Woking

Short films are plentiful but generally the standard is so low that anything half decent is a delight. This is only a parody but it's precise and smart and leaves one wanting more. It's the work of two TV commercial makers calling themselves Big Red Button. They've chosen to spoof a genre not that well-known outside its homeland, the Latin American telenovela (soap opera). The joke is that it's not only shot but set in the UK. At the funeral of her mother, Becky receives a message from the grave. Performances are note-perfect and, although it's ridiculous, the story is, well, gripping. Not only did I want more (the film is only 7 minutes long) I would have watched next week's episode of the non-existent soap. Film was a finalist in the London Short Film Festival in 2020 and has since played Sky Arts (praised by none other than Mark Rylance), BBC2 and more. Strange that IMDb states that dialogue is in English when part of the fun is that everyone in Woking, Surrey, speaks Spanish.